Mitt Romney's Show About Nothing

Timothy Birdnow

Mitt Romney is to the conservative base of the GOP what Lancers is to Dom Perignon; little fizz and no head retention. Or perhaps he's Diet Coke to a diabetic; just doesn't work to stop the shakes. At any rate, the man is as exciting as Bob Newhart but not as funny, and he just doesn't have anything to say.

Seems Karl Rove has noticed this as well.
http://www.conservativehq.com/article/6564-karl-rove-criticizes-romney-stop-presses

Now, Rove is the penultimate insider, the company man writ large. If HE is starting to talk about the one calorie campaign...

The problem is that Romney's campaign is content free, and by design. Romney wants to be President to be President, and he holds no strong convictions that come across. He is running the McCampaign, is the candidate that would be on the menu at McDonalds. HE doesn't matter; it's purely a design of corporate type advisors, the truly plug in the name candidacy. Obama was the Democrats version last time, but at least old Barry could read a good teleprompter. He had better speechwriters. Ken here has material aimed at the vaunted "independents" and so when they pull his string he lets loose with a blistering outlash of soft phrases and easy platitudes. He lacks even the appeal of Obama's racial heritage, cannot claim to be from a "hip" ethnicity; he's a vanilla shake with low-fat ice cream and fat free whipped topping.

Romney's about as cool as Al Gore or Gerald Ford; he just has better hair.

It is axiomatic among campaign advisors that the candidate only wins by moving to the middle. This is based on simple mathematics; most Americans see themselves as Independents, and so you must move to the middle to capture this demographic to win. And this is even true, if you are a Democrat, because the Democrats are way outside of the mainstream. America is a center-right nation, and a conservative message can play well if delivered properly, but a leftist message will not. So the Democrats MUST position themselves in the center. But it does not work with Republicans, because moving to the center means moving to the Left, and then the committed arm of the Party becomes tepid at best. Also, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the electorate; the assumption is that being an Independent is like being left handed, something immutable, and that a message must be tailored for the Independents as you would tailor a fishing pole or guitar. But this is blatant pandering, and the public senses that. It works for the Democrats because they always have to pander and they have no constitutional objection to shamelessness. But when someone tries to win the Conservatives and the Independents, it becomes clear that they are disingenuous. Furthermore, It misses a fundamental truth; people's views are malleable, and they can be educated. In fact, the public WANTS to believe the Conservative message, but is bombarded night and day by the media and other disseminators of information who artificially warp their thinking. America is much like the Mississippi river; contained by levees, dams, and other artificial constructs. The Mississippi yearns to be free (if a river can be said to yearn) and would, if left to itself, follow a very different path than the one set for it by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The media, academia, etc. are the Liberal Corps of Engineers, the ones creating the artificial barriers to move the great river that is America in the path they wish it to follow. Put pressure on that river, however, and it will burst the levees and flow into it's natural course. A good Conservative candidate like Ronald Reagan simply cast a lot of rain on the pool, and eventually the river overwhelmed the flood containment systems. America will move to the Right if given compelling reasons. Unfortunately, the GOP doesn't believe this, having swallowed the fish tale about moderates and independents. They keep trying to tailor their message rather than boldly giving their message, keep trying to follow the course preplanned by the Liberal Corps of Engineers rather than overflowing the banks and setting their own course. The river contained cannot win the battle, and neither can a GOP that plays by the rules laid down by the media and academia.

Only a fool plays three card monte with a street hustler.

And so the giant brains in the GOP have bequeethed another plug-in-the-name candidate to us, crafted a campaign aimed at cravenness and compliancy, and set in motion another uninspired attempt to work within a system that is irredeemable broken. We may even win despite ourselves, because Obama is an even worse choice, and he has no weapons in his arsenal (other than money, money, money). But nobody will be voting FOR Mitt Romney; only against Il Duce. And Romney will be a good boy, not shaking up the status quo, not rocking any boats. Things will continue as they have been, sliding towards that abyss in a quiet, orderly fashion.

What would you rather die of, Ebola or pneumonia? Ebola is more dramatic and frightening, but in the end you are going to wind up just as dead. Obama is Ebola, but Romney is the less dramatic infection. Either way we end up with largely the same policies. Romney will not fight hard against Obamacare. He will not close the borders. He will not fight to end abortion. He will not shake things up.

But he IS better than Obama, and we are going to have to support him, because otherwise we end up with the communist rather than just a simple fabian socialist. Better sick now than dead. But we are going to have to keep the Mitten in a chokehold. We will have to rain on his parade, that parade that attempts to march down the riverbank. He's going to have to swim for his life, because otherwise the dams and levees will hold and he'll follow the pre-planned channel. At the end of that channel is a great and terrible sea. We'll all be lost in it.

So the little wooden mormon will have to be squeezed. IF he somehow manages to squeek by Obama, that is.

Those who remember Jerry Seinfeld's show remember they created a "show about nothing" and tried to sell it to NBC. In the end it bellyflopped. Theres a reason why people do not create shows about nothing. Romney should take a page from Seinfeld.